a “frozen” fourth

Good morning Party Girls! We had a super fun weekend celebrating my (Ashley’s) youngest sister’s fourth birthday. Like every other four year old in the world, Lauren insisted on having a Frozen themed birthday party. The Party Girl jumped on board for designing a dessert table for the family bbq party, and threw in some extra surprises just for kicks. Check out how we celebrated Lo’s fourth birthday!

First, you will note that the child in this picture is not four. That’s because I couldn’t tear my six year old sister Jordan away from the Snow Cone Station we built. It was crazy hot last weekend, so a day spent by the pool was only made better by some shaved ice. I don’t know what it is about kids and ice chips with pure sugar poured on them (turns out we forgot to dilute the syrup, sorry parents) but that station was a hit the whole day. J made a solid bar tender too, whipping up snow cone recipes like a pro. Sorry the picture sucks, it was almost impossible to get a crowd free version of this photo!

No Frozen party is complete without some Olaf ice cream treats. We had a ton of fun making “snowmen” with ice cream scoops, and the little Olaf face cookies were some left over party treats we thought would make them more fun!

The best part was seeing Lo’s face when we brought the cakes in. I made two, one chocolate and one vanilla, because a) Jordan, the strangest six year old ever, hates chocolate and it always seem sad to see her not eat cake and b) how could you choose between Anna and Elsa? It’s impossible. It is the Sophie’s Choice of children’s parties. Lauren was in awe the whole time, and when she found out they were cakes she actually gasped. Adorable.

Even though two cakes seemed like a lot of dessert, it’s actually more of a vertical masterpiece than a giant cake, so I made some back up cupcakes with melted chocolate snowflake toppers. The cupcakes looked a little worse for wear because we dropped them. We’re the creative minds, not the delivery team okay?

The snowflake cookies were sort of a last minute fun idea to make colourful cookies with the left over dough. I sprinkled them with some glitter paste but its hard to see here.

We ended up with a ton of food left over. We fed the neighbours in my dad’s court.

We have a group of kids from different ages at our family parties, so loop bags have gotten harder each year. You can’t really find age appropriate goody bag stuff without making someone jealous (did you know 12 year olds still like zoo stickers? Because I didn’t, and miscalculated that one for sure). So for this party I decided to get literal with the building a snowman theme (also my sisters have drilled the song in my head, to the point where over the two days it took me to write on 8 gift bags, I sang the “Do You Want To Build A Snowman” song over and over and over and I think I had nightmares). I made little Olaf edible puzzles the kids could “build” and then eat as snacks. Most of the kids (probably on sugar highs from the snow cone overdose) ended up taking them to school the next day. I got rave reviews from the parents of strangers my sisters impressed at the lunch table.

All in all it was a pretty great success! We have some more party details that didn’t make it into our dessert table shots that we thought we’d share as DIY projects in case you want to try your own Frozen party. The best part of the whole thing was having a winter party in June meant feeling really refreshed. There’s something really indulgent about eating snow cones in a pool floaty, you know?

Of course the other best party was seeing this special little girl celebrate her fourth birthday after a difficult and stressful year. One day we’ll share more about this brave little fighter, but for now we’ll leave you with this sweet photo of Lo playing with her (musical, haha dad) Anna Barbie.